This Is the Free Open-Source Answer to Windows’ Snipping Tool
The Windows snipping tool has improved the iteration after iteration, but it is still lagging behind many third -party screenshot applications, which generally offer more customization options and additional settings that you can modify. If you are looking for an open source alternative, you are lucky: there is an excellent one.
In its base, Sharex is a screenshot and a cut -out tool as well as the Windows snipping tool. Press the correct shortcut (default Ctrl + Print Screen) and you have a screenshot. But it can do much more.
Like the snipping tool, you have a whole series of shortcuts to take photos of specific regions, your active window or almost any other combination that you can think of. Unlike the snipping tool, however, you can define the shortcuts on what you want.
It also facilitates the capture of screenshots from any active window.
As I can modify the keyboard shortcuts, I changed them with default options, then put these shortcuts on the buttons of my mice using the Synapse software from Razr. This allows me to capture screenshots with only the press on a button, which is more practical than you think when you do a lot.
Although they share many of the same basic functions, Sharex takes everything that the Snipping A and composes it up to 11, and adds dozens (if not more) additional options.
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Flexible capture options
The Windows snipping tool really has only five different capture options: active window, office, a rectangle defined by the user or a video.
Sharex, on the other hand, supports all these, and it supports GIF capture, a animated image format which is extremely common, and scrolling screenshots, which are exceptionally practical if you try to capture a higher screenshot than your current display.
You can also configure self -saving, which will automatically take screenshots over a defined interval. It’s a little more niche, but I found it useful when I want to collect screenshots from a presentation.
Versatile image edition
The snipping tool has basic editing tools, but they are Really basic. You can draw simple shapes, highlight, crop and draw.
On the other hand, Sharex is almost equivalent to Microsoft Paint, with the exception of AI’s features, of course. He can blur and pixelate images, crop, resize and run the images. Can you add emojis, draw shapes and the best of all? It has a color selector, which facilitates the marking of screenshots so that they correspond to the much easier content.
Cloud synchronization
You can easily configure the snipping tool to place your screenshots in your OneDrive folder if this is what you use for a cloud backup, but everything that requires skipping manually in certain hoops.
Sharex, on the other hand, does it in fact a bit Also Easy to synchronize your screenshots with the cloud.
Sharex will synchronize your screenshots with the cloud by default. You must deactivate this parameter immediately, which I address later in the article.
Sharex supports more than 20 file, text or cloud synchronization options as soon as the box is released. The chances are that if you use it, it is available immediately.
In case it is not included by default, you can manually configure just about any other cloud service you may want, including the one you are self-hosted, if it’s your thing.
A little busy with a learning curve
The only important problem with Sharex is the quantity of things. It has a huge number of parameters, personalization options and functions, and they are not always super easy to find.
For example, if you want to change what’s going on when you take a screenshot, you can control almost everything.
You get this level of control about anything if you are ready to search the settings to get it. However, I found that the default settings are generally close enough for my ends.
A warning word: Disable automated downloads
Alarming, Sharex is configured to automatically download your screenshots in a cloud accessible to the public, and it doesn’t even tell you. I would recommend that you deactivate this function immediately until you have the options you want to use.
To do this, right -click the Sharex icon and select “Application settings”.
Select “Advanced” in the left column, then scroll down until you reach the download section. Click the button next to deactivate the load and go from “False” to “True”.
I also blocked it in my firewall, just to be sure.
However, if you accidentally download something, it is quite easy to remove, although the setting is completely buried.
Access the main window, then access the image history. Right -click on the image you want to delete, then go to open a deletion URL. If the deletion URL is grayed, it means that the image has not been downloaded.
The fact that Sharex automatically downloads your screenshots from the Internet would normally be an immediate break for me, but because the program is superb in all the other ways, I work around this.
